Use Woven Placemats To Transform An Empty Canvas Into Boho Wall Decor

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Boho decor often focuses on incorporating natural materials into an eclectic and often free-spirited design style. Sunflowers can feel very rustic and bohemian, when paired with more neutral color palettes. If you enjoy crafty DIY projects, you can create your own cute and rustic sunflower decor. This simple, budget-friendly DIY lets you transform a blank white canvas into a piece of sunflower art with woven placemats. It's an easy project that doesn't require a lot of tools or materials and can be hung in any room of your home.

To make your boho, sunflower art piece, you'll need at least one canvas. Pick a size that will work for your space, but one that's also big enough for the project. You may want one that's at least 11 inches by 14 inches to start with, which is a medium-sized canvas that gives you room to work. Beyond the canvas itself, you need round woven placemats, scissors, a pencil, glue, and small strips of paper. This project uses brown paper that looks like cut pieces of raffia to represent the flower petals, cementing the boho, neutral vibe. However, you can use whatever paper you have, in colors that work for your home or that mimic more of the look of classic sunflowers, such as yellow or orange.

There are a number of simple DIY projects that let you create pretty sunflower decor, and if you're looking to create art for your walls this boho-inspired DIY is extremely easy and versatile. Start by cutting your placemats to fit the canvas that you have. Create half round and quarter round pieces to represent the centers of your sunflowers. The quarter rounds will be used at the corners of your canvas and the half rounds would go towards the edges. If you have a small round piece of the placemat, it can be used towards the center of the canvas to create a full flower. 

Place the cut pieces of placemat onto your canvas where you want them and trace the edges with the pencil. The pencil line will be your guide for where the paper petals will be placed. Start gluing the strips of paper along the line that you've drawn to create your flower crown, gluing only the ends so that the top edges of the petals raise away from the canvas. Allow the glue to dry before moving on to the final step. Then, glue the placemat pieces onto the canvas, completely covering the glued down edges of the paper so that they look like they are sprouting out of the flower's center. Let the project sit so that the glue completely dries and then you can hang the canvas on the wall.

Working with a blank canvas gives you a lot of flexibility to make the project your own. If you want to add more depth and dimension to your piece, try painting smaller sunflowers in the blanks spaces between your placemat flowers. Not only does this give you a pop of color if you paint them with yellows and oranges, but it can fill in some of the negative space that remained white after you secured the paper and placemats. Another option is to paint the canvas around the flowers in a solid color, if you don't want a plain white background for your piece. Just use the lines you drew for the flower petals as your guide for where to paint.

Another thing to consider is what glue you're going to use on the canvas background. There are a lot of glue options on the market and knowing which glue is best for your DIY projects is important. While you can use hot glue on your canvas made with natural materials, such as linen and cotton, if it's made of a synthetic material, the hot glue can melt or warp the fabric. Even with the ability to use hot glue, for a more permanent hold, particularly with the heavier pieces of woven placemat, you'll want to use something like Gorilla Super Glue or E6000 Craft Adhesive, both of which offer a more permanent hold and can adhere mixed media items that are both porous and non-porous.